SOURCE: “Patrick Kavanagh on Poetry,” in The Journal of Irish Literature, Vol. 6, No. 1, January 1977, pp. 69–70.

In the following extract, originally published in X, a literary journal, in 1960, Kavanagh professes his beliefs about the nature of poetry and discounts the role of the critic.

Part of the Palgravion lie was that poetry was a thing written by young men and girls. Not having access to Ezra Pound who showed that the greatest poetry was written by men over thirty, it took me many years to realize that poetry dealt with the full reality of experience.

Part also of the lie was that poetry was very sad— Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. 

This is not true. Our sweetest songs are those that derive from that day abandon which is the keynote of the authentic Parnassian voice. The abandon is not the riotous braggadoccio which is...